


sprains & pains

by Zara Hemla (zarahemla)



Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-31
Updated: 2009-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarahemla/pseuds/Zara%20Hemla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He just hears a crack, and he is back on Brokeback.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sprains & pains

**Author's Note:**

> i gave you my body and you ate aplenty  
> i gave you ten lives and you wasted twenty  
> \--superwolf

In the corner of the unused corral, Jack pukes into the dust and tries to ignore the sharp throb in his ribs where the bull kicked him. Slowly, coming closer, he hears Cal Hawkins's boot-tread, and then Cal puts a hand on the back of his neck and Jack remembers Ennis again, tangling a hand in his hair, and he has to fight not to bring up more bile.

"Twist, you ok? That sumbitch hit you hard."

"I'm fine, Cal." He shoves away from Hawkins, getting to his feet alone.

"Some of us was thinkin ... that maybe ... you shouldn't reride tonight."

"Yeah, Cal," Jack says, and he can't even stop himself, "and that's why some people ride, and some people paint their faces and call themselves clowns."

He can almost hear Cal's face fall. "I'm just tryin to help."

"Go help someone who needs it. I'm ridin." The air swims around him and he breathes in the dirt, willing himself not to cough, not to choke again. Behind him, Cal mutters something, but Jack doesn't even care. He's riding, and that's an end to it.

He draws Lucky Mike, who has a mean streak but is rideable enough -- in Tulsa two cowboys had made all eight seconds on him. He smokes quickly and goes into the chute, bracing himself over the top of Lucky Mike's wide back and watching the bull snort and toss his head. The rails are hot under his hand; he idly imagines the bull's hide sizzling as he sets ass to leather. So he wraps rope around his hand and nods, and they set him free.

For a few blissful heartbeats there is nothing to think about but the meat between his legs, the rush of air around him, and his heartbeat. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. He doesn't see the bull's head come up on a real vicious flip, and he doesn't feel his own face connect with it. He just hears a crack, and he is back on Brokeback. It has just rained and Ennis has a raindrop running down his face, but it looks like he's crying.

* * *

Dear Mom and Dad

I had a little accident on the bull and I am in the hospital but there is no need to come down and see me or nothin. I will be back ridin in a little while and if you wanted to see that, I guess you would.

Your son  
Jack Twist

* * *

Perched on the shaky edge of the hospital bed, Lureen talks for hours about tractors and horses and other machines that even ranch-raised Jack has never heard of. Horsepower and fuel lines and carburetors and all that other shit. And cost, always cost and rental and hauling. Jack lets it wash over him, the odd combination of her pretty mouth and what it talks about.

She is the only one who visits him during the two days he allows himself to sit still and stare with his untaped-up eye out the window at the Texas grass. Other than her questions about his health, she asks nothing personal, and he is grateful for it. At the end of each visit she takes his hand. There is little in her, he now sees, of the girl he thought she was, the wild barrelrider that shucked her shirt off in a pickup cab.

When she leaves and he is left in the hospital's half-light, he writes imaginary postcards to Ennis. They are bitter, very bitter, and short.

Ennis: If you had only asked, I wouldn't be here all banged up.  
Ennis: Why won't you come down to Texas to see me.  
Ennis: If I disappeared, would you even know it?  
Ennis: I'm thinking of marrying her. See how you like it.

Though he has pen and paper in a drawer, he doesn't use them. Instead he takes the pills they give him, turns his head into the pillow, and tries to still the choking that his gut won't seem to stop. In the morning he is pale but smiles at Lureen as she pats his pillow and tells him that in the afternoon the riders will be moving on to Dallas.

"Great," he says. "I'm sick of this hole. Gotta get back up on those sumbitches, show em who's boss."

"That's what I like about you," she says, and smiles at him like the dangerous barrelrider. He finds a lot of peace in the fact that neither of them are what they say they are. He smiles back.

\--end--


End file.
